Butler’s Beveridge is making run at gold
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Growing up, Noah Beveridge didn’t care for riding a bike.
When he and his buddies left Northwest Elementary School in Butler each day, his friends would hop on their bikes and ride around the neighborhood. Beveridge joined them, only he ran.
“I would always be running everywhere,” Beveridge said, smiling.
Years later, Beveridge, a senior at Butler, is one of the top high school distance runners in the state. Who would have thought his dislike for riding bikes would kick start his journey toward being a star runner?
Beveridge has a thirst for winning. He is the defending WPIAL Class 3A champion in the 3,200-meter run and won the WPIAL Class 3A cross country championship last fall. He also has an Orange Crush: he’ll run collegiately at Syracuse.
Beveridge turned heads by breaking school and meet records in the 1,600 after running a winning time of 4:12.58 at the 54th annual Butler Invitational. Surprisingly, it was likely the one and only time Beveridge runs the event this season as he said he much prefers longer races. He said he will begin to focus on the 3,200, and will also anchor the 3,200 relay team. He’ll run the 5K at junior nationals this summer.
The 3,200 is Beveridge’s bread and butter. His personal record is 9:07.26. He ran that when he finished fifth at last year’s PIAA championships. Beveridge said his goal this season is to go under nine minutes.
“We have the Baldwin Invitational [May 4], my favorite race of the year besides states,” Beveridge said. “I’m going to run it there. If everything is just checkmarks on the list of being healthy, I’m going to try to break nine there.”
Last year’s PIAA champion, Nathan Henderson of Lancaster McCaskey, won the race with a time of 9:01.77. Beveridge and Henderson will be future teammates at Syracuse.
“These guys, I know their times from when they were in high school. You want to be in that realm, and you know you can be,” Beveridge said.
Change of scenery
The throwing events at big meets just aren’t the same as they had been the past few years. Jordan Geist drew big crowds to watch him throw the shot put and discus as he dominated the competition and set record after record. With Geist now at Arizona, that opens the door for throwers who competed in Geist’s large shadow.
“I was trying my best, but he was ridiculous, a freak of nature,” Seneca Valley’s Zach Gehm said. “When you get those types of athletes out there, you’re gunning for second place. That was like a goal in my eyes last year. With him gone this year, I’m hoping to get some more golds.”
Gehm, a senior at Seneca Valley, finished third in the shot put and discus at last year’s WPIAL Class 3A championships. South Fayette senior Sam Mastro placed sixth in the shot put. Both watched as Geist won by large margins.
“It’s like you never expected to beat him. So it wasn’t like I was worried he was going to beat me because I knew he was going to beat me,” Mastro said.
Gehm and Mastro, who train together, are now in the spotlight. They are again two of the WPIAL’s best and now have legitimate chances to win WPIAL and maybe even PIAA titles. Mastro won the shot put and discus at the Butler Invitational. Gehm won the javelin, and was second in the shot put and third in the discus.
Penn Relays
The prestigious Penn Relays are being held this week at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, and a handful of WPIAL stars will see how they stack against some of the best high school athletes in the the United States and Jamaica. The competition runs Thursday through Saturday.
The local athletes entered are North Allegheny’s Ayden Owens (400 hurdles), Seneca Valley’s Zach Gehm (discus), Hempfield’s Molly DeBone (pole vault), Upper St. Clair’s Savannah Shaw (mile), Mt. Lebanon’s Molly Mangan (400 hurdles), Brownsville’s Gionna Quarzo (3,000), Butler’s Jena Reinheimer (discus) and South Park’s Maura Huwalt (discus).